


when light, darkness, and time make a deal

by limerencing (abeyance)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Based on a Tumblr Post, Canon Compliant, Child Neglect, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Visions, Loneliness, Not Really Character Death, Past Abuse, Post-Canon, The Force Ships It, Time Travel, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-22 22:53:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23401696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abeyance/pseuds/limerencing
Summary: In his dreams, Ben would visit a far off, distant place, where a girl lived alone. Never did he think that girl would one day save his life - in countless ways; present, past and future.a time travel fix-it based on tumblr user @galacticidiots 's tags.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 20
Kudos: 56





	when light, darkness, and time make a deal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BensCalligraphySet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BensCalligraphySet/gifts).



> original tags:  
>  _#thinking about this feral sand goblin finding a passed out kylo ren instead of BB-8#maybe his TIE broke down and he wasn’t able to stop it from crashing#and she rescues him from being dragged away by teedo#she takes him back to her AT-AT and nurses him back to health#he’s very dispriented when he wakes up#but it doesn’t take him long to realize where he is#and who he’s with#it shouldn’t be possible#because the last thing he remembers... is dying in her arms#on exegol#which means he went back in time#YES IT’S A TIME TRAVEL AU OKAY ___
> 
> _  
> _i tried to hold back. I TRIED. but ive had a fix-it rolling around in my head since seeing tros, and reading these tags, it all finally came together. fran love, you are a GENIUS!_  
> _
> 
> _  
> _i started this at 1am and finished by 5pm. my fingers hurt._  
> _
> 
> _  
> _this first chapter...it takes a bit to get to the tag's point, i would say. but every word is needed in order to relay the reasoning as to how the time travel happens and _why _. itll be worth it, i promise.___  
> _

Ben Solo didn't like the taste of birthday cake until his tenth-standard birthday. 

It wasn’t that it was _bad_ \- frankly, it was better than any other food he'd eaten. That's what happens when constantly flying trade-post-to-trade-post, hence eating almost solely flight food. Not that he ever minded. If it meant he was flying, he was okay with that.

Taking that first bite wasn't the first time he felt something was... _different_ , either. Some time through the course of the standard year, it felt like a part of him had lifted. A part that he never even knew was slouching. He felt like he was focusing better - that he was more _interested_ , that he _cared more_ when things happened. An accidental fall that scraped his knees hurt a little more than it used to. His chest felt lighter when he smiled truly, like another level of happiness he hadn’t unlocked, and when he saw those struggling patrons at the posts, he felt more sad than he used to.

Everything felt _more_. More _full_ , more... _lively._

And it was nice for a few years.

Sure, he felt more irritation at the loud voices in the next room. More sadness in the times he would lie awake and think of all the ways he was truly alone. But he _felt_. And he liked that more than when he used to not.

Besides, there was always that...undertone of happiness. Of the fullness anyone would want to feel. It felt like...like early childhood bliss. The curiosity, the playfulness, the loving parental surroundings. He blamed it on that voice inside his head. The one friend he had to remind himself he had, even surrounded by many kids his age. Because what else would it be, or come from? 

It didn’t matter, though. Because like the rest of his life, the five-year-interval hit, and everything changed once again.

He was on the line for lunch when it all came crashing down.

It - whatever _it_ was, hit him straight in the chest, burned his throat, gave him a headache from some far away heat - and he ran outside as if he could escape it.

But he couldn't. It was blinding. It was heavy, and sharp, and it took his breath away, leaving his lungs screaming for air as if they had shrunk. He tried the breathing exercises - the ones Uncle Luke had taught him and he only half listened - but it only left him gasping and _was it possible to breathe wrong?_

His throat strained as if he was yelling, his neck formed a crink, as if it had been twisted too fast, and _heat_ \- kriff, he was hot.

Nothing exactly led him to the conclusion. He just knew that what he was feeling was his greatest fear. Abandonment. 

Nothing got better after that day. That one half of him that had always seemed to balance out the other...it hadn’t gone dark, so to say, but it didn't give enough of what it used to to hold him over.

That voice, though. His friend. That was still there.

During the next following months, he gave more into it. None of the other kids seemed to like him, except Tai, maybe. But when his friend told him Tai was just playing with him, as some sick prank, he agreed. Just as he agreed to his teachings as well, which were far more ambitious than whatever Uncle Luke seemed to be limiting him to.

And so his mind always seemed to be active. Even in his sleep. There were voices, everywhere, all the time. But it was better than being lonely, with no voices at all, so Ben welcomed it. He knew himself to be becoming stronger in the ways of the Force after all.

Which was what was so...odd, about this dream.

 _Odd_ , because it wasn't bad or unsettling. In fact, the scene he woke up in was rather...peaceful. Still. So unlike what his life was like these days.

And...and it was _hot_. Hotter than what he had felt in a while. He took the blinding rays as the source of the heat, and made his eyes focus on the opening to the shelter he appeared to be it. 

The opening was...well, very much a door. Door _way_ , more so, with nothing but a tarp covering the gap out of the rusting metal. 

With his sight focused, Ben sat up to observe beyond it. The tarp didn't flutter one bit - so wherever he was, it was without wind.

 _A dream, right? He was in a dream?_

His senses were completely clear. Nothing like his usual dreams which were just a tangle of voices and whispers and colors. For all he knew, this is what dreams were supposed to be. He could feel a thin mattress under his hands, smell the old metal and dirt, hear the...a voice. 

He stood - slightly surprised he didn't have to duck in the crowded - but empty - space. Ben looked around, almost searching for it as his ears cleared up. _Is this an AT-AT?_

The thought still in his mind, he rounded a pathetic pass for a table. The voice got louder, but nowhere less softer. No less unmistakable. It was…

A child. She sat a bit aways from the lone chair on a - yet another - pitiful excuse of a rug. She held a doll’s hands in between tiny, skinny fingers, dancing it to sounds made from her puffed cheeks. 

She didn't seem to notice him. Ben crouched down, slowly, in case he would somehow...blow her away. Like she was mist. Or something.

A closer look showed him the doll was makeshift. It’s frayed clothing was no better than the girl’s; something he didn't seem surprised about, seeing as her home was nothing more than a fallen AT-AT. 

The word _home_ caught his mind. He wondered what planet this was - one so barren yet safe enough for this girl - no more than five standard years, it seemed - to be here alone as her parents were out working during the day. The thought made him rise again, looking for clues, deciding whether to push his luck on the whole not-being-noticed thing to glance outside. 

Ben took in the barrenness of the place itself. Nothing but a table and a chair, a pile of trinkets near the door, and the mattress he woke up on. The rather thin and small mattress.

The girl zoomed past him, holding the doll out like it was flying. She ran around the space, large enough for her size to do, and Ben backed against the wall, scared to find out what would happen if they touched. He watched her from there - he took in her tattered, twisted clothing, the matted hair that seemed to not be taken out of those three buns in _forever_ , endless amounts of fly-aways that she kept brushing out of her eyes.

She took the makeshift doll and crashed it into the wall of her bed, following its slide to the floor. Ben followed, grateful that she chose the wall facing him. 

The girl muttered something about patching the doll up - that it was only a tumble out of its spacecraft, and with some rest, it'll be all better soon. Ben took in her sunken eyes. The smile that twinged a little too serious for a girl her age. 

He kneeled as she stood and turned towards the bed. Lifting up a thin blanket, she slipped the doll underneath, tucking it in with a pat.

Her eyes drifted upwards.

A wall of marks reflected against her big eyes. Ben looked forward to see them himself.

And it was just that - tally marks. A line or two of them, about three feet up from the level of the mattress.

He returned his focus to her. Something about the shine in her eyes made the whole thing click.

And he...didn’t know what to do about it. He didn’t know if she was even real. Something told him she was. Maybe she wasn’t alive in his present tim, but at some point, she was. Just maybe. (but then again, she lived in an AT-AT.)

The more he looked at her, the more the truth formed into an unbreakable thought. And it was heavy - it pulled him down. Down so far, to a place he thought he could never reach, despite the voices in his head. A place where rage was the only answer, and the only way out was the claw up. He could feel the terrors of those who would harm her anymore. Who _left her_ to begin with. Who...who could let such a factor of abandonment file into this girl's senses. Too young to even decipher what had happened to the point of accepting it. 

His rage burned, his protectiveness blurred his sight and thoughts, until he could not see the little girl with the three buns. He did not hear that empty silence, but rather screams from the fires that he smelled. And for what he sensed…

Ben Solo opened his eyes against the green light of his uncle’s saber sweeping back into a fatal blow.

He forgot about his dream, and things never improved.

* * *

After that, the other half of him dimmed. 

Again, it didn't leave completely. It hummed like a fluorescent that was toned down - more so as the years dragged on. His own side was...enough. He was so down in the Dark that it was beneficial. 

After meeting Snoke face to face, it was clear that his friend in his head was not the one who brought that other side of him. _Your father's heart,_ Lord Snoke had called his small thread of Light left behind. But no, that wasn’t what it was. And when he realized Snoke did not know of its existence, he decided that Snoke never would - that it was his. He would throw it away on his own. He lived without it once - for the first ten years of his life. He could do it again without guidance. 

He knew what that side brought him. The addiction it set him on - the sense of living, as he could as closely describe it. Fully. Feeling fully. Being fully _Ben Solo._

But Ben Solo was gone.

He covered that other side with a mental blanket, flushing out its Light.

It made the job easier, anyway.

* * *

It worked for years. In the beginning, he kept throwing mental blankets over that Light - worrying the light, although weakened, would shine through, or the warmth the light left on the blankets would somehow work the same way. It felt suffocating at first, half of himself being under all those layers, but then he got his mask, so he could blame it on that.

Near the beginning there was something he felt that helped him. It was small, tiny as a matter of fact, but it was a reason as to why he was with Snoke now. Why he made that lasting decision in a feat of blurry haze. That he wasn't here only because he had nowhere else, that no one else would take him - but rather here _for_ someone. Whatever that meant. 

With the years of blanketing that other side of him, he forgot about its existence whatsoever. All he knew was that the absence made him numb, and numbness, he soon learned, helped. 

Until...well, it stopped. 

After his obsession over keeping that other side covered and hidden away in the beginning years, Kylo Ren had never deemed it necessary to check up on it when nothing ever changed with it. Hence his forgetting of it.

So when he deep down, started to get _hot_ during a debriefing following his hunt for that map to Skywalker on Jakku...he didn’t know what to think, frankly.

He mulled over it for hours. A warmth he hadn't felt in a long time - not the kind that ventilation would bring, but a _different_ heat, the sort that happens more across the bones than across the skin. And he couldn't understand what it was, what it _meant_ after so many years of being able to subside it.

“A BB unit was spotted. With - with a girl.”

That _warmth_ swept into the concave of his darkness. It fell as a long ladder - and his rage gripped the first bottom rung as a distant part of him coincided with the very near part of him, like a long forgotten language, flooded with under toned vigilance. 

“ _What girl?!”_

* * *

The _girl_ was terrifying.

From her stubbornness, to the brilliance, to the _kriff,_ way too familiar mind. The jolt of her awakening, of her _pushing back, pure Light -_

He didn’t exactly know that his blankets had started steadily singeing away as the light got brighter - just that there was _heat, everywhere_ , and the ladder of it in the Dark hole of his was getting stronger as his hands started to climb higher. 

Not claw. Climb. 

The other side of him was becoming more lively again. Making him feel more again. At the _Worst_. _Timing._

It would soon mark fifteen standard years since his alliance with Snoke. Still, he had yet to fulfill his duty to turn to the Darkside - _finally_ be accepted somewhere. _Belong_ somewhere, completely. But again, it's been fifteen years since he felt anything. Fifteen years of shutting out that other side of him - of _trying_ to shut out the light completely.

And with Han Solo twenty feet from him, it all just...made sense.

It should have made sense. 

But there was that long lost, familiar ache. The sharpening of his senses. The means of...meaning.

_I'm being torn apart._

The both sides of him cracked as if he ignited the saber through himself.

Her scream from above ripped through his core.

_Sadness - grief - despair._

He _felt_ it all, goddammit. Each blanket sizzling into nothing with every passing moment, his head pounding on two sides screaming at each other to go away. Every rung of that ladder getting closer together, making the journey out of the Dark hole longer with effort. 

A day’s worth of feeling, and he already was sick to the stomach of it. (or maybe that was his blaster shot).

He swallowed the despair his other side felt as he threw the traitor into a tree. His mind twinged with effort as he tried to call that saber to him, the _Skywalker saber_ \- and _oh._

As if the ignition of the saber was the switch, the last blanket burned off. And he remembered he had another side of him. And that side was _terrified_ , and it was _furious._

Fear and rage mixed together as he sparred her through the forest, this random girl with random force abilities and randomly good sparring techniques. The other half of him glowed in a new way that he never had felt before - pride, maybe.

All he knew was that he felt it completely when she slashed his face and left him on the edge of a cliff.

* * *

It was the worst time for that side of him to return indeed. 

Han Solo’s death was tearing him apart. He couldn't sleep. He couldn't think. That side was filled with far-off comfort - that passer-by kind, nothing useful. But it had a steady glow now. Brighter than how he remembered it.

Then again, he hasn't seen light in a while. Maybe it was even darker than it used to be. He knew it wasn’t, though.

It would flicker brighter each passing day. The building warmth sent to push his hands up the rungs of the ladder out of darkness, but under Snokes orders, he desperately tried adding rungs instead. It tired him out; both materializing them and climbing the constant additions. But he was tired anyway.

One day, the light flickered with aggression. It was the seconds before and after the girl - _Rey_ \- herself materialized in front of him. It felt like an oddly placed dream - but, surprisingly, familiar. With the sense of her being out of place.

Even on the second time it happened, when their minds connected them once more, he couldn't quite piece together where he had felt such a feeling before. One of detachment, but then...intimacy.

Slowly, he could feel the other side of him reach out to the Dark. Not just the warmth traveling through...the lightness reaching towards the Dark. And, horrifyingly, the darkness of him doing the same.

When their fingertips touched, the Dark and the Light gave in, and they merged as one. Just a bit. But the feeling hummed all the same.

From what was soon learned, not enough to stay together. 

He only had a few more steps of the step to go. He could feel the warmth more than ever, so welcoming in the coldness of the dark, and yet...he couldn't. 

With the detachment of the Light and Dark, the anchor snapped, and he once again fell.

He never fully let go of that ladder. Near the bottom he caught hold of it as their final Force connection diminished.

Because there was something about their Force connections. Something he needed to know, and something he needed to hold on to.

Although detached, his lighter side shined steadily. Healthy. Both sides closed off from one another, resented - but still held onto the awareness of the other side. The knowing that when they ripped apart, some Light stayed with the Dark and some Dark stayed with the Light.

He was...better, but not that much, so he didn't exactly understand where the shine came from. but there was loneliness there, too. Not belonging. Something he was all too familiar with. So he decided that his first side was simply too dark to show the real brightness of his other.

And then, about six standard months into a year with interaction, he found it in a dream.

Well, the dream found him.

He woke on a mattress. A dingy one, with a relative smell, and rusted metal, and a growing wall of tallies.

He knew this place.

A farraway memory, only achievable by destination solely. He knew this, because the repressed dream from almost fifteen years before had floated to the surface like he'd just awoken from it.

He sat up from the bed. He grew since he was a boy, and his feet now hung off it.

The place had as well. A few more trinkets cluttered the AT-AT, even smaller than it was all those years ago, as well as some eating ware. The pile or parts was no longer there - instead, a small workbench, with tools and screws. Resting on a pole was that doll last seen being tucked in the mattress. He..almost smiled at the thought of it. a twinge of his heart overtook, though. It's been a long time, and this place still looked...lived in. At least as much as it could offer. 

He turned to the tallies. They had definitely lined up - more reached the ceiling, which made him wonder if that little girl was counting up or down. It didn’t matter, though. Only one person still lived here.

At the sound of metal clanging against metal, he jumped, turning towards the noise.

And no other sight could ever make him feel so _stupid_.

She was there. _Rey_ , with her three buns and worn scraps of fabric, dumping some parts onto the work bench, slinging off a bag from her shoulder. He stayed frozen at the spot by the mattress. Even when she walked right over to him, right _through_ him, to sit on the mattress and add another mark on the wall, like it was a daily instinct.

He cut himself _some_ slack, since he had no memory of the events of that last dream until this moment. But that familiar loneliness he felt when reaching into her mind for the first time during interrogation should have connected the dots. Their Force Bond should have answered some distinct question that always floated in his mind when he thought too hard.

Like the last time, she didn't see him. So he took this time to take in the sight of her.

She wasn’t quite the Rey he remembered. She barely reached his collarbone, and her face still held the certain kind of adolescent roundness despite the hunger hollowing her eyes. This wasn't...it wasn’t present-day Rey. She looked maybe sixteen or seventeen, a little older than the age he was when he had his first dream the night that...well. She wouldn't be on Jakku when he woke, where he would be able to set out and find her in this AT-AT, _fix things_ -

The thought stunned him.

The little girl who played with a doll like there were no other troubles, using the growls of her empty stomach to mock the sounds of ships. The little girl who kept a tally for each day her parents were gone like it was the most natural thing to do in the galaxy.

It made him feel a different kind of loneliness. A denied one. It was the only thing he could blame it on.

Rey sighed, any emotion on her face unreadable, and returned to her bag. She pulled out a ration pack and distributed it to the bowl-like kitchenware, adding the simple ingredients to prepare the rations. He followed her around like a duckling.

He had seen her in her most vulnerable states. He had been in her mind, seen her life and loneliness and fears more than anyone else had. But this...this was the most vulnerable he had ever seen her.

And it made him guilty. For not being more careful, for not reading more into her side, for not…

It made him miss her more than anything.

Rather than sitting at the table, Rey went outside. Thankfully Jakku seemed barren enough that no other beings would be near them to test the theory of her being the only one unknowing of his presence. 

She sat on the side of the AT-AT, digging into her rations without a second thought, and he watched her. He had always been partial to the rations on the Falcon when he flew with Han. it all had that empty taste. But Rey seemed to be above minding it.

She looked up and huffed. With his eyes solely on her, he didn't know what her annoyance was prompted by, and followed her line of vision.

Across the wasteland of dunes was a speeder coming towards them. A cloud of sand conjured behind it, which would unmistakably hit them if the driver did not diverge from the path they were on. He waited for Rey to go back inside...but she stayed put.

The speeder passed them, its sand cloud trailing behind it, but - none of the particles reached them. He wouldn't _feel_ it anyway, he didn't think, but it should've been visible all the same.

What _was_ was the sweeping cloud of sand diverting straight from them. As if wind had blown it away. Although, there was no wind on Jakku -

A signature of the Force passed through him. It clutched at him, such _light_ overtaking him completely, undeniably. He snapped back at Rey, who seemed unbothered. He reached into her mind - just enough, just a tap, just to see if she knew…

“You have no idea, do you?” he murmured - in awe, almost. She had just used the Force without awakening her full powers, simply out of sheer annoyance. Her pushing back into his mind last year suddenly made sense

Rey snapped her head to him, eyes wide and alert.

At first, he followed her gaze since it seemed she was looking right through him - at a danger, perhaps. Something the amount of Force she was using could detect.

But when his eyes met with nothing, he dawned on it. _She could hear you._

Rey stuffed the last piece in her mouth before grabbing a staff and scouting around the outside. He started to follow her - but only until he realized her left footprints in the sand. He kicked the steps clean and stayed rooted, waiting for her to come back around. She did, a brush of confusion and stiffness lining her mind, and she reached through him to grab the bowl and headed back inside.

He went to follow her. But when he ducked in, his eyes returned him back to reality.

This time he remembered everything. And he hated it - always going to sleep hoping to return to that AT-AT, the one place he knew Rey was, unlike reality. It wasn't that he searched for her when awake, either - the absence of their bonds were enough of a tell with what she felt about seeing him. 

And he accepted it. It was a feeling he felt before, so it wasn’t like it hurt anymore than it did the first time. Or so he told himself. Closing off was an option then, so it was one now. 

The blanket returned. Only one this time, and the light sometimes still hummed with acknowledgement, but he gave it the message it seemed it wanted.

* * *

As Supreme Leader, Kylo Ren was busy. The Resistance was in hiding. There was an ever-looming threat, coursing through his veins more than ever, pumping Darkness into his blood with obligation.

And still, he thought of almost nothing but that blanketed light side of him.

The twenty years its been there. The fifteen years he tried to forget about it. The way he never truly did, because it felt like a person of itself, and there was no way to truly let go of that.

He followed that darkness in his blood. It led him to Exegol, and an answer he never knew he'd get.

_Two halves of the same whole._

_Dyad. dyad dyad dyad dyad dyad dyad dyad dyad dyad dyad dyad dyad d -_

The blanket once again gave way. That side of him - _Rey_ , she burned with fury, with misery, with endless heart break towards him. The bond reopened. Their sides teased the reconnection of each other. His hands climbed that ladder up towards the light steadily, if not a little stubbornly. 

_We’re a dyad in the force, Rey._

She looked frantic. _Please, no._ He begged. _It's the answer. The answer to what I didn't even know I was searching for, but I needed it, you needed it, we - I - need you -_

She pounced on him on the skeleton of the Death Star, and he let her. He could feel her anger towards him. Her desperation to just find a home, find peace, find a balance, and the lack of outlet she had. So he stepped up. He would be her outlet.

And then his Dark hole got a lot more shallow.

It was as if a part of him deflated - on _both_ sides, on his and Rey’s. His soul escaped him - a great fraction of it.

 _Mom_. 

The end of the ladder was near.

Rey impaled him. 

And along with their shared misery, terror filled her side, and that crack merged back together, and his climb paused as her hand pulled away from the gaping hole of his tunic. 

“I wanted to take your hand.” _I wanted us to merge as one final being._ “Ben’s hand.”

Palpatine called to him, distantly. Like a reminder. What his _goal_ was. but his mind...her words...gave him another one.

Years toward this. _Lives_ towards this. The Darkside, the Emperor, the belonging. One last step. But...her words. It created another path, so close - closer, and easier, and merciful -

It was odd, the way his father visited him; something like his dreams of Rey, but another side of the spectrum. 

_I’m being pulled apart._

_Dad._

_I know._

His hand touched a rung bathed in light.

He followed Rey's signature back to Exegol. It was stronger now, with the rawness of their bond, with his acceptance of it, with his side closer to the surface of the hole as ever. 

There was a protectiveness that swept over him as he got near. It was age old, a long ago feeling, one that his teenage self pushed on when watching an abandoned little girl play with a doll. 

He never liked Palpatine’s intentions. 

He never liked when her side tightened with terror or panic. 

He never liked the thought of this being the end.

He was surrounded.

They connected. 

Before, there was a spark of wariness as he landed on Exegol from her side, perhaps wondering what his Force signature was doing here. His _changed_ signature, more likely.

Now, all he saw was hope, and relief, and...and clarity. 

She gave him the lightsaber through their Bond. It merged them as one, almost completely, some edges needing to be smoothed out, but...together.

_Fight together, die together._

And so they did. 

Palpatine had sucked their Life Forces out of them - but not enough for the complete kill. 

He tapped on Rey’s mind. Exhausted, same as him, but still alive.

_Protect. Protect._

Protect the girl.

He stood up, ready for the fight. He was promptly thrown down a pit.

Thankfully, he had a ladder.

Her side had darkened with lack of life - but so had his, so it was alright. They were one soul - two halves were enough. It would replenish after a bit. He felt her shake as his muscles did, forcing herself on her feet as he did, standing up to Palpatine as he attempted.

She was Light. He was Dark. That's why she was succeeding.

The rungs over his ladder were numbered now. It was only a few more to the top. They were glazed with light, her light, _their_ light, dimmed with the exhaustion of what she was doing - but still was electrifying. 

He reached for the last rung.

And - and it all went dark.

A part of him left his body. 

And still, he felt so much heavier.

He tapped against her mind. It didn't respond.

The rungs had disappeared. The ladder diminished along with the sense of half his life. His second half. 

_No_. 

He clawed the rest of the way up the pit, only half-relieved to see her laying down, not disintegrated. 

_Rey_. _Rey, do you hear me?_

She could hear him in his dream. Through time. Surely, she could hear him now.

Her eyes were open. Like his dreams, she didn't see him.

_Rey. Rey._

Her skin was warm. That was good, right? Everything else - his mind - her mind - it was cold. But her skin was warm.

Maybe - maybe she was just _too_ exhausted. His hip was badly bruised, his leg most likely broken. He couldn't get her out of here. _But maybe_.

Her signature - her signature might just be too weak to hear him from any distance. He held her to his chest, head to head.

_Rey? Can you - can you hear me?_

Her side was gone. Not just dimmed - gone. 

_Protect._

Their halves had joined. He still had some of her, mixed with his. He gave it all to her. Like she once did with him.

Everything - but that last rung.

Her eyes, the life in them, gave him that light that was ripped away. His hand reached for the last step of the ladder.

She kissed him. She gave him the last slice of light needed - to...to -

Ben smiled, the weightlessness of the Light finally sweeping in full swing. She searched Ben’s face, she ran her fingers through Ben’s hair.

The last rung of the ladder, the last piece of his Life Force, now not needed, misted away.

He thought he knew desolation.

The thoughts that went through the mind when he said something only to be ignored. The realization that he had not talked out loud for an entire day or two, and his parents had yet to realize.

The way that his throat burned in the reminder of touch starvation every time someone patted on his shoulder or gave him a hug.

The want to...not die, but also not exist, but also to live. In just a different life as a different version of himself.

But nothing could prepare him for the void of the World Between Worlds.

He stood within darkness - within black. His feet hurt, his leg was blinding, but he didn’t know what would happen if he tried to sit down. If the matter of this land could hold such a complex idea.

His mouth moved - just to call out. See if there was an echo. His throat vibrated with voice, but no sound came out. Or at least reached his ears.

How long he was there was unknown. He just knew he stood there with thoughts trying to hinder on one thing until it felt like he was floating, until there was no feeling at all.

He kept involuntarily closing his eyes amongst the blakness. It was the same when he opened them, so most of the time he would just keep them closed, because looking into nothing but black was worse.

Ben felt nothing for a long time.

So when he did, although it wasn’t much, it sure felt like it.

\- the feeling was...established. Grounding. Breaking. He grasped onto it all the same.

Heat. Seclusion. Dependency.

Slowly, the thin thread of their shared soul dangled and weaved back together.

And like that he snapped out of the World Between Worlds.

* * *

_Heat. Seclusion. Dependency._

The first thing Ben noticed was how sandy his hair was when he jerked awake. The movement earned his leg a twisting pain, in which he attempted to sooth with a rub of his hand. The feeling reminded him of where it came from - or rather, the _better_ feelings. 

Her fingers in his hair. Her smile assuring his eyes. The press of her lips on his, the pull of his smile on his cheeks. 

The clasping of their hands as he faded. _Exegol._

Ben swallowed to find his throat dry. 

What _wasn’t_ dry was his forehead. Cold, actually, despite surrounding heat. The scent of a dingy rag placed there traveled to his nose, stale water almost prominent.

His eyes honed in. They met the ceiling they had only laid upon two other times in his life before.

Rey’s AT-AT.

His head pounded - his torso stinged - getting up after however long he spent standing in that place felt the farthest away option. Instead, ben turned his head - 

\- And with his heart in his throat, his eyes laid upon Rey.

She was bent over her work table, busying herself with something. It was surely another dream; she wore the same wraps they had met in, a grueling reminder to time left broken.

Ben watched her; he watched the girl that one day would put her life’s trust in his, who would one day kiss him and bring him to the two seconds of peace he never knew. His _dyad_ , his _other half_ , the half that came to be with his life’s meaning. The one who was at fault for him liking his birthday cake on his tenth birthday. For finally giving his life the true feeling it missed.

Eventually, she turned around. He kept staring at her, expecting her to see through him like all the other times. 

Her eyes widened - he followed her face as she took the two steps to the bed, crouching next to it, looking at him with wonder.

\- _Looking at him_.

She could see him. His own eyes widened. Did that mean she could - could he…?

Rey took the cloth from his forehead and pressed her hand to it. 

...Yes. He could touch her.

This was...this dream was different.

Rey pressed her lips together and took the cloth away entirely. He watched that frown between her eyebrows form and almost smiled.

“You’ve taken quite the nap,” she teased. His brain turned to mush. Then her voice went soft; “My name is -”

“- Rey,” he said without much thought. _Kriff. He already messed this up._ All because he wanted to make sure it was the first thing he said. Some sort of instinct, like unfinished business from Exegol.

Her eyes flashed. “...Yes. How’d you know?”

It was a bad idea - the worst, perhaps. But he wanted to tell her everything.

**Author's Note:**

> go check out the [original tags/idea at galacticidiots on tumblr!](https://galacticidiots.tumblr.com/post/613307805804494848/logan-solo-random-star-wars-59) the dialogue at the end is inspired by  
> kyloren's gifset based on the tags.
> 
> this is my first fic on this Ao3 page that ill be using for star wars stuff. ive posted two fics on my main, but they are barely more than drabbles so we wont be missing much lol
> 
> next chapter we will get to the real deal! i will hopefully have the whole fic up by the end of the week.


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